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Charts & Graphs - Nov. 20, 2013

We are studying a number of metrics and events that occur on the ice. We have a detailed analysis that gets prepared for our team before each game, and for our opponents that we're ready to face.

Keep Calm and Corsi On: outside the playoff picture and looking in

Vancouver assistant general manager Laurence Gilman appeared on the 2nd intermission panel of the Sportsnet broadcast of last night's Panthers-Canucks game, and was asked directly about modern hockey analytics..

From Dan Murphy:

"Fancystats guys say you're doing the right thing. Your Corsi and Fenwick in terms of shot attempts. Do you guys pay attention to that, as a management group?"

The situation isn't as bad as it looks, even with a five-game losing streak, the Canucks are still doing a lot of the right things. Not against Florida, but the Canucks had out-shot their opponents in the three games leading up to the contest with the Panthers and probably deserved better fates against the Ducks, Sharks and Stars. Any player will tell you that you can't control how the puck bounces, and the Canucks struggle for offence recently hasn't been because of a lack of chances, or shots.

At the start of a season there's usually a maligned player that, due to unlucky on-ice shooting and save percentages more than anything, winds up a minus-whatever in the first couple of weeks. This season, it was Dan Hamhuis. If you'll recall, Hamhuis was a minus-4 through six games, capped off with that disastrous own goal against Montreal.

Through six games, Hamhuis sports a PDO of 885, the worst of any Canuck outside of Alex Burrows, who’s only played one game. (Also sporting low PDOs, by the way: Ryan Kesler and Chris Higgins, both of whom are beginning to get it from the fans for their lack of goal production.) The bulk of Hamhuis’s ugly PDO is the team’s .810 save percentage when he’s is on the ice, the eighth lowest on-ice save percentage in the league among players with at least 5 games. Four of the players with worse on-ice save percentages are on the Edmonton Oilers — that’s how bad it is for Hamhuis right now. This doesn’t mean that Hamhuis isn’t making mistakes in the defensive zone, it’s just that those mistakes are leading to goals against far more frequently than they normally do.

That was written on October 15th.

As of November 20th, Hamhuis' PDO is up to 1001, per ExtraSkater.com. Instead of Canuck goaltenders putting up an .810 save percentage behind him, Roberto Luongo and Eddie Lack have helped out their pal Hamhuis, posting a .900 save percentage now. Meanwhile, the other two players that had been questioned for their lack of production early in the season, Ryan Kesler and Christopher Higgins, appear to be doing fine.

Judging players by starts is a little unfair. If a player goes into a cold streak in January, well, at least you have about 35-40 other games or so to judge him with. A minus-4 slump, or a 5-game goalless drought, looks much worse when it comes in the first six games in the season than it does after a few months of relatively normal production. If it happens midseason, it gets lost in the wash. At the start of the season? It becomes a storyline.

It seems that people have forgotten the slow starts of Hamhuis, Kesler and Higgins. Usually, the best course of action is just to let the percentages work themselves out.

He shoots he scores...efficiently

In the early days, analytics mostly centred around goal and points rates, because there wasn't an awful lot of shots data to parse through. Rather than look at goals or points per game, it made somewhat more sense to look at goals and points per 60 minutes of 5-on-5 ice time, since that took away the advantage from players that played a boatload of minutes.

Here's a quick quiz: Given that Henrik Sedin and Daniel Sedin are first and second on the Canucks in points per 60 minutes this season, who is third?

Second question: Which player leads the Canucks in goals per 60 minutes?

The answer to the second question? Zack Kassian is first, then Ryan Kesler, and then Richardson again. The Sedins have been playing so many minutes that even though Daniel is second on the team in total goals with seven, only five have been at even strength, and he plays more even strength minutes than anybody in the league other than his brother. That's going to bring down his rate slightly, but who is to complain as long as he can keep playing over 20 minutes a night?

It's super early, so these numbers have little predictive value, but they're kind of fun to look at.

That's not entirely true... in just two of his eight seasons has Burrows finished with a shooting rate in that range, usually finishing on the high side. Between the 2008 and 2012 seasons, he shot at an incredible 15.9%, one of the highest marks in the league, and since then in 57 games, he's been at 7.6%. We probably could have expected a slight decline in his personal shot percentage, but it's fallen much lower than we could reasonably expect. He's still generating close to three shots on goal per game, so I'm still looking at him to break it wide open. The Canucks have had some scoring issues lately, but, man, it just doesn't seem like they ought to be.